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RB, the argument I'm making is that shareholder interest, properly understood, includes considerations of other constituencies because such consideration is in shareholder interests. It's similar to what I wrote elsewhere about my law firm treating its employees well - we do that because it's in our interest to do that. That breaks down if you say that other constituencies have a claim that trumps the interests of shareholders.
The corruption argument is simple: when the goals of the company are simple and discrete, the grounds on which decisions can be justified are far fewer, and there are fewer opportunities for manipulation of the machinery in favor of the decisionmakers and at the expense of the beneficiaries. The more goals there and the more interests to serve, the more opportunity there is for cloaking self-interested decisions, and the more opportunities there are for corruption. Try to imagine the type of lobbying that goes on in state legislatures, and transpose that to the corporate boardroom. That's what I"m getting at.
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